Maker Finds Her Niche Remaking Horses

[Wandering Eyes]

Feel free to make plans, working with Thoroughbreds–just don't be deceived that it'll ever be you who decides how far they work out.

With a young son to raise, Becky Maker had quit the rootless life of a trainer and taken a role on the pre-training team at WinStar.

“Just to stay in one place, have a salary and be safe,” she remembers wryly. “Within six months I had a horse rear up and flip over in the shedrow. Severe fracture of the femur. So after 20 years galloping on the track, I go to the farm for a safe job and that's how it worked out. But it was life-changing.”

Once out of hospital, she accepted that the horses had given her a heavy hint; that they were, in fact, making new plans for her.

“I didn't want to be left unable to take care of my son just because I couldn't make myself stop riding,” she says. “Riding had been my whole life, from the age of four. So it was a hard decision. But when it's time, you stop. It was just that I then had to look for something else; to reinvent myself.”

Except the horses actually had the answer there, too. As a trainer, she had a reputation for reviving the jaded appetite.

“I would get all kinds of horses that'd had a bad go of it,” she recalls. “Owners would send them to me to see if I could turn them around, get them back up and running again.”

Fifteen years on, that flair for the horse in need of repair–whether in body or soul–has aggregated to a resume that would, in a regular barn, have qualified Maker for the Hall of Fame. Horses to have been through her lay-up facility at Shantera Farm include Jackie's Warrior, Mitole, Echo Zulu and Whitmore. In terms of wider recognition, however, perhaps her most important customer has been Epicenter.

For it was here that he made his precarious transition from a distressing public breakdown in the GI Breeders' Cup Classic to thriving young stallion, passing on his salvaged legacy down the road at Ashford.

It wasn't so much his ability that made Epicenter such a critical test, as two other factors–one generic, one highly specific. In general terms, a horse requiring rehabilitation after a racetrack injury is always at fever pitch, mentally and physically, yet suddenly asked to tune out into a calm, obliging patient. In this particular instance, moreover, recuperation was severely compromised by an extra twist of misfortune.

Epicenter just days before his Breeders' Cup run | Coady

“He was prepped to run the race of his life,” Maker remarks. “Half a mile later, he's pulled up. So he came in full of fire. And that injury was also a very serious one. He went to Rood and Riddle, they put the screws in. A day or two later, he came to me. But it took about a month to figure out that there was a problem with the screws.

“That was a really difficult time because we were trying to tell whether the pain was beyond the range he should have been feeling. I'd seen his injury before, so knew he would have some consistent soreness associated with it. But his was different. Looking at him, I was like, 'This horse should not be in as much pain as he is.' He would take a step and be fine; then take another, and it would suddenly be surging. And then he'd slowly let it down.”

She urged extra X-rays, and again; and finally the third picture showed one of the screws working loose.

“So he had to go back to surgery, have that tightened up and some extra screws inserted,” Maker explains. “Then he came back. And of course all this time we're worrying about him foundering, because he's on the other leg. So he really had a rough go of it.”

But this time everything worked out perfectly: the second surgery, the second rehab. And just as well, given that they were now into January and he was scheduled to test-breed in February. In the event, that spring he bred the second largest book of mares in the land.

His case invites an obvious question: with Maker's intimate insight into the challenged Thoroughbred, has she observed a correlation between the most intelligent and responsive patients, and the best racetrack performers?

“Generally, yes,” Maker replies. “But remember that some of these horses are a product of their handling. The really well-bred ones will have gone through the best of the best, and all my clients are such good horsemen. But if ever you do get a horse that has any kind of bad habits, you just try to figure out what works for them.”

But then that's how she approaches every case, from melodramas like Epicenter to horses being spelled for a routine break. Maker never wants to lay down the law; just to let a horse find its way to where it needs to be.

“I'll just try different things and see what works for that horse,” she says. “This is a peaceful place. They do generally just settle into how everybody else is behaving, find their peace and relax into the program. Horses are very, very intelligent. They understand. If they're on stall rest, after the second, third day, they're like, 'I get it. I'm not getting out. I'll go along with this.' Basically, they want to please people. So then it's just a matter of communication, between you and the horse, to figure out how you get there.”

The entrance at Shantera Farm | Courtesy of Becky Maker

True, there are times and temperaments that may call for extra help. “Some that are high-strung, there's a herbal calmer that I like,” Maker says. “There's all kinds of little tricks. If they don't like loud noises, and things set them off, I'll put cotton in their ears. Everything is about helping horses to relax. Big stalls, lots of windows: they love something to look at. All the paddocks are set up so that they're next to somebody, especially the boys, because obviously I can't turn them out together. Fillies I will pair up, depending on the length of their stay. Getting them out and moving is one of the healthiest things that you can do for horses, though obviously one straight off the track needs to start off gradually. Some will start to fret, want to come in. You just gauge each horse.”

Maker will naturally get input from trainers, whose trust dates back to her own days on the backside–an eight-year stint crowned by GII Hawthorne Gold Cup winner It's No Joke (Distorted Humor).

“It's really hard for trainers, me included when I was doing it, just to hand your horse over to somebody else,” she says. “Obviously, you're only doing it because the horse needs help. He might be sound, but maybe he needs some weight, or doesn't want to train, or just needs a reset. But then if they come back worse than you sent them out, you're like, 'Now what?' The trainers that knew me on the track, and how I took care of horses, they know that I remember how I'd have wanted a horse to come back, if I was on the receiving end. So I think right away they really trusted me to give them back a better horse than the one they sent me.”

The respect is mutual.

“The trainers I work with, they're such good horsemen,” Maker says. “It doesn't matter if they have 200 horses or 20, they'll be like, 'Listen, with this one, watch his feet.' And they'll know the personality too. They're all very patient. I think that with the climate on the racetrack today, they're just, 'Take all the time you need. I want a solid horse when it comes back.' And so I'll be looking out for those smaller, secondary issues: a horse might have had ankle surgery, but then something's going on at the hind end, which might not be noticed until we start hand-walking.

“And that's part of why I'm here, that heightened awareness on the racetrack. The trainers I work with are all receptive to this. A lot of times a horse will come in with an issue coming up repeatedly, but nobody can find anything. So I think they've taken a big responsibility for the health of their horses, being willing to abide by the rules and give horses all the time they need.”

Fan favorite Whitmore spent some time with Maker | Horsephotos

Having rented a small farm for four years, in 2017 Maker stretched to buy a 72-acre site on Shannon Run Road, which she named for the smallholding where she had been raised in Michigan. Upgrading by steady increments, she made a major breakthrough when impressing the Winchell family with her transitioning of recruits from the juvenile sales.

“I'd really stepped out on a limb to buy this place,” Maker acknowledges. “Back then it only had 24 stalls, but the place I'd been leasing had just 10. And all I'd ever done is call a few trainers and ask if they had anything to send me. So I thought maybe if I really got out there, let people know what I was doing, it might work on a larger scale. It was scary, but I didn't have time to second-guess myself: at that point I'd built the walker, the arena, a new 22-stall barn, paddocks. And then once a few of the trainers came out and saw how I was setting up, they were like, 'You're getting mine!'”

For all the growth in traffic, she will always retain an emotional stake in any of the horses whose recuperation bears her fingerprints.

“Honestly, I'm so proud of all of them,” Maker says. “Epicenter, there was a lot of pressure. But however stressful it was, it became very rewarding. I was able to say, 'No, this is not right: I want another X-ray.' And everybody had enough respect for me to get one done.

“He was a handful, but his constitution got him through those back-to-back surgeries. Super intelligent, too, definitely recognizes people. I went to see him last fall and he was in the back of his stall and I went, 'Hey, Epi.' And he was like, 'Ooh!'”

It can be hard to see these horses leave, but Maker retains her fixed points: a horse in training, a mare producing babies at Brookdale, an off-the-track jumper that she rides herself.

“And that fills in my void, gives me the adrenaline rush that I had my whole life,” Maker says. “I do wish that I'd started this 10 years earlier. I felt like I was a good trainer, but I am 10 times better at what I'm doing now. I loved breezing my own horses in the mornings. But when I started doing this, it was like, 'Yes!'

“Like any job, sometimes it will drive you nuts. But then, once everybody leaves, and I'm walking through the farm and seeing all these happy horses out in the field, it feels like it's all worked out. And when I see these horses go back to the track and do well, it's very fulfilling. You do get attached to some of them. But when the trainer calls and says, 'Hey, did you see? That horse ran great. He's happy, he's sound. Thank you so much.' That also makes me very, very happy.”

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